Being an ethical agent requires supplying non-externally-dictated reasons for acting.

Evidence

Scheffl er’s argument bears some relationship to legal phi los o pher Daniel Markovits’s effort to construct an account of “the necessary architecture of the fi rst person,” in which Markovits argues that any meaningful conception of personal ethical agency must include a recognition of oneself not only as an agent responsive to reasons for acting, but also as a generator of reasons, including reasons that are intimately and uniquely one’s own. While Scheffl er argues that the mere fact that individuals view themselves as subject to ethical norms of any sort implies that they must accept a distinction between their agency and the larger causal order, Markovits argues that a minimal logical requirement of individuals being able to coherently view themselves as ethical agents is an ability to supply reasons for acting that are not solely dictated by an external normative theory, such as the optimization rubric underlying utilitarianism. From either perspective, the rub is that by urging a standard of pure impartiality and programmatic decision making, causal optimizers also implicitly ask individuals to deny the belief that their judgments and actions are ethically distinctive— the very belief that seems to be a minimally necessary precondition for having reason to accept any theory of normative ethics. — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere, 120

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Utilitarianism can only treat people consistently by denying their sense of being ethical agents. — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 122; The norm of instrumental optimality can only derive its pull from non-optimizing considerations. — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 117; Acts carry ethical significance apart from any notion of answerability — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 458 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Moral value is assigned externally to actions, not intrinsic to them. #contradicts (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 84
• Acts carry ethical significance apart from any notion of answerability #contradicts (0.75) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 458